FROM COLLEGE DORM ROOM TO COUNTRY FARMHOUSE
HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS. . .
The old saying, “Home is where the heart is” certainly reflects reality for many family caregivers. We tend to be compassionate people who spend a lot of time at home with our loved ones, for obvious reasons.
But care giving can also drastically alter a family’s financial situation and require lots of changes and transitions when it comes to where they live and their overall quality of life. And that can eventually affect the well-being of the entire family.
While preparing to write this story, it dawned on me that during my fourteen-year care giving journey, the meaning of the word “home” became a continuous moving target for me.
Why?
We made five major moves in fourteen years. No wonder I was so exhausted all the time!
Here’s some background to help you understand the unique life events that led to our family moving into the House That Love Built. Some of these details were covered in earlier posts, but it is necessary to repeat bits of them here for continuity.
FROM HOMELESS TO LIVING IN A DREAM HOME
After my husband was released from nine months of in-patient rehabilitation, we were — in reality — homeless.
Before his accident, we were live-in caregivers in the lovely town home of a successful businessman who was wheelchair bound, in exchange for room and board. When he decided to get married, we taught his bride-to-be how to take care of him and made plans to move into our own place.
We put earnest money down on a home we planned to lease with option to buy. We were both employed full time with stable careers, and we finally had the income to move out of apartments and buy our first home.
The only challenge was that the home was being remodeled and would not be ready for move in until Labor Day weekend.
So, a month before our scheduled move to our new home, my husband’s parents offered us temporary housing.
We lived in a dorm room on the campus of the Bible college where they were superintendents. They let us store our furniture and household belongings behind the stage in the cafeteria on campus.
It was there on the Bible school campus that the freak accident which resulted in my husband’s spinal cord injury happened. Our daughter and I continued to live on campus during my husband’s lengthy hospitalization and rehab.
Fast forward to his release to return home after rehab. We had no home of our own to go to. I quit my job right before his release from rehab so I would be able to care for him and our daughter full time.
So, we were homeless and jobless.
We applied for long term Social Security disability income and prayed it would be enough to live on.
AN OFFER WE COULDN’T REFUSE
We soon realized that we were not going to be able to survive financially if we stayed in Houston. So, my husband’s parents generously offered us another deal we could not refuse.
They owned a fifty-year old farmhouse that sat on two-hundred and sixty-five acres in East Texas. The farmhouse mortgage had been paid off long ago and no one in the family had lived there for years. It would take some fixing up and remodeling to accommodate a wheelchair. But it was rent free housing on lots of beautiful land.
It seemed like the perfect place for us to start over, to rebuild our lives after my husband’s spinal cord injury. It even had a barn and pastureland with plenty of room for farm animals that our young daughter could enjoy.
I liked the fact that she would grow up in a rural area in a tiny school system where everybody knows everybody vs. a big city public school system. The tiny “cow town” near the farmhouse had a population of about 3,000 people. Most of them seemed like decent citizens, from what I’d been told.
So, on June 11, 1984 we packed our belongings, said goodbye to Houston and headed for our new home in East Texas.
An entire caravan of family and friends camped out around the farm house in nearly a dozen RVs for the first two weeks.
Men scrambled to hammer and saw while women cooked up a potluck storm.
The first thing that had to be done was to build a long wooden ramp so my husband could roll from the driveway up to the front porch in his wheelchair.
To lift him in his motorized chair several feet off the ground meant lifting a combined total of around five-hundred pounds. It took several strong men lifting together to get him safely from the ground to the concrete porch until the ramp was built.
A used hospital bed was set up in the master bedroom with a twin bed next to it for me. Our daughter moved into a bedroom upstairs in what was originally an attic but was later converted to three bedrooms.
Next, the crew built a 4′ X 4′ tile roll-in shower off the master bedroom that accommodated a potty/shower chair and had a removable water nozzle that could reach all body parts.
It was barely big enough for the chair and one person to squeeze into the space between the wall and the chair. But we were grateful that we had a private shower off our bedroom because the only other bathroom in the house was down the hall and inaccessible without major home renovations.
They also installed a sink near the shower so I wouldn’t have to use the kitchen sink to wash and bleach his urine bag and other medical appliances.
Originally built in the 1930’s, the house already had wide doorways and a wide hallway. So no other inside modifications were needed. My husband was able to navigate his wheelchair from room to room without too much trouble after a little practice.
After installing and inspecting kitchen appliances and making sure the water well still worked, the yard was cleaned up and mowed. It was important to keep the grass around the house mowed so we could see the wild animals that lived on the land, should they approach the house.
The farm was home to lots of wild critters including snakes, gators, wild bores, raccoons, possums, rabbits, and more. It was the snakes in the grass I wanted to be able to see before they saw me!
This was all a bit overwhelming for me, a 25-year-old lifelong city girl who had never lived more than a few blocks from “civilization”. The farmhouse was a six-mile drive from town. To reach a decent-sized “city”, we had to drive at least an hour.
But I was grateful for the rent-free housing, the help of our family, friends and neighbors who helped us settled in, and the opportunity to build a new life. I didn’t have a clue what that new life would entail, but it had to be better than what we had just been through in Houston.
The old house served us well for about eight years but required frequent repairs and patch jobs. We relied on the able-bodied men in our church and other male friends we for most of the repairs.
Whenever help from others was not available, I learned how to use lots of tools I’d never used before. I did my best to keep both the inside and the outside of the house in working order.
Between full-time care giving for my husband and daughter, maintaining three acres of land, plus yard work and housework, I used to joke that I didn’t think I even sat down for more than ten minutes at a time the entire eight years we lived in the farmhouse! I worked from sun rise until after sundown every single day.
Time and the elements eventually took a toll on the house and on me. The men from church got tired of patching and repairing the old house every month. It was only a matter of time before it would become uninhabitable.
A MIRACLE OF MERCY
One day our pastor pulled us aside at church. He told us that the church leadership had met and decided to build us a brand-new home!
With the exception of the electrical and plumbing work (which required permits and brand-new parts), all materials would be donated from businesses in the community, the surrounding counties and all the way to sources in Dallas, eighty miles to the east!
Labor would be provided on a volunteer basis by skilled workmen from our church and others in the community who wanted to contribute time and effort to the project.
There were a few legalities to handle before construction could begin. Those were expected to take a month or two to complete.
We didn’t mind waiting one bit. We were so excited!
The new house would be custom designed for the wheelchair. It was going to be small, but well-built with quality materials. It would be energy efficient and generally everything that the old farmhouse was not.
The best part was that my husband (who was a professional draftsman before his injury) got to help design the entire home within a 1,232 square foot limit.
The project would take several months to complete, depending on weather conditions, availability of materials and manpower. But at least we finally had hope that we would have better living conditions within a year from the time the planning began.
The new house would be built on the same property (within a stone’s throw of the old farmhouse), but much closer to the main highway.
Our dream of home ownership was finally going to be a reality, a little less than ten years after my husband’s injury.
LIFE LESSONS LEARNED
- Learn to be content and “at home” in your own heart wherever life takes you. Grumbling and complaining because your living environment is imperfect only makes you and your loved ones miserable. “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.“ ~ Philippians 4:12
- Trust God to provide what you need (not necessarily everything you want) in His perfect timing. “And this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus.” ~ Philippians 4:19
- Understand that when you are truly unable to help yourself for legitimate reasons, God IS your source and He WILL send people with hearts of compassion to help and provide when you simply ask Him to do so. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.…” ~ Matthew 7:7
- Expect miracles! They are all around you. You just have to look for them and thank God for each one. “What do you mean, ‘If I can’?” Jesus asked. “Anything is possible if a person believes.” ~ Mark 9:23
- Take nothing for granted. Not the roof over your head, the job that you have or the food on your table. Practice an attitude of gratitude by thanking God every day for every good thing in your life. “And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” ~ Ephesians 5:20
